From obscurity to stardom
Chinese actress E Jingwen is ready for big time with the help of Stephen Chow Sing Chi.
WHEN Chinese actress E Jingwen first received a phone call in August last year telling her she has been offered the lead in the latest movie by Hong Kong director Stephen Chow Sing Chi, she thought it was a scam and hung up.
It was not until the third call by co-director Herman Yau before she realised she has landed the plum role in The New King Of Comedy.
“The co-director made a total of three calls and sent me the screenshot of a WhatChat group before I believe (it was true),” E said to Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily.
While Chow’s latest movie did not do very well at the Chinese box office, it was the latest in a line of Chow vehicles to bestow fame on a hitherto unknown actress.
With her role as Ru Meng, an extra dreaming of stardom, E has joined the likes of Cecilia Cheung, Athena Chu and Jelly Lin – who are known as the “Sing Girls” in landing their big breaks in a movie starring or directed by Sing Yeh, Chow’s nickname in Cantonese.
One can hardly blame E, 30, for being sceptical initially, as she has played mostly minor roles before getting her change of luck.
E, whose real name is E Bo, is a graduate of China’s Central Academy of Drama, whose alumni include luminous names such as Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Deng Chao. She emerged as champion in the Chinese reality television show Comedy Show in 2014, and later took on bit-part roles in several movies, with some of the roles uncredited or unnamed, such as in The Great Hypnotist (2014) and Journey To The West: The Demons Strike Back (2017).
Chinese media reports said E was selected by Chow, 56, as her real-life experience mirrored that of Ru Meng in his latest movie.
The New King Of Comedy isa female version of Chow’s 1999 movie, King Of Comedy, which starred Chow himself as Wan Tin Sau, another “calefare” (slang for bit-part actor) who wants to make it big in show business.
The 1999 original movie was the ticket to stardom for Cheung, who played Chow’s love interest Lau Piu Piu.
Cheung was a relative unknown at 18 when she acted opposite Chow in 1999. However, her acting career took off after the film.
She received two separate nominations for Best New Performer at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2000 - for King Of Comedy and her second movie Fly Me To Polaris (1999), where she played a nurse opposite Taiwanese singer Richie Jen. She won the award for Fly Me To Polaris.
Cheung has since become a household name in Hong Kong’s entertainment industry, and was in the news recently after giving birth to her third son without naming the child’s father.
She provided the dubbing for the Cantonese version of The New King Of Comedy.
E can also take heart from Chinese actress Jelly Lin’s experience. Lin is currently starring in the romantic movie Fall In Love At First Kiss with Taiwanese actor Talu Wang.
Lin has no acting experience before she landed the leading role in Chow’s movie The Mermaid in 2016. She was 19 then and has since become a star in China.
She was nominated for Best New Performer at the Hong Kong Film Awards for her role in The Mermaid in 2017, and went on to star in other movies such as The Dreaming Man (2017) and Genghis Khan (2018).
E said she was thankful to Chow for giving her the opportunity after she stuck to her acting passion since her graduation from Central Academy of Drama in 2010.
“I have strived for it for eight years, and it was worth the bitter-sweet (experience),” she said on Weibo. “The future is still about working hard and fighting for it.” – The Straits Times/Asia News Network